Knee-deep in drama

Knee-deep in drama - Yahoo7

Budding Home and Away actress Demi Harman has been thrown knee-deep into drama since joining the soapie in August.

It has been no easy feat for the fresh-faced 19-year-old given the recent trauma that has unfolded for her character Sasha Bezmel.

"Within the first couple of weeks I had full-on storylines with my mum dying, and stealing money, so Sasha has had to experience things that kids should never go through because of the choices she's made," she said.

It is following the sudden death in a car crash of their mother that Sasha and her half-brother Felix are shipped to Summer Bay to live with their father, Dr Sid Walker (Robert Mammone).

Her initial plans are to leave the Bay as soon as she is financially capable but things quickly turn around when bad boy Stu Henderson (Brenton Thwaites, who also starred in Foxtel's teen drama SLiDE) comes on the scene.

The two fall into a serious relationship but it seems to happen all too quick for Sasha.

Stu soon realised she had doubts about their relationship, which caused him to lose his temper and lash out at Sasha.

But instead of fleeing the relationship, Sasha decided to stick around and, surely but slowly, became the victim of more domestic violence.

"It's easy for you to sit down at home and say you wouldn't let yourself get into that type of situation but there are so many complications," Harman said.

Before filming the confronting "slap" scenes, Harman trawled domestic violence and youth bullying help websites to get a feel of how real people dealt with physical and emotional abuse.

"It was really good to read about other people's stories," she said.

"Obviously with Brenton, we spoke about it a lot to make it clear on how we were going to act out the scenes."

In the usual soapie fashion, it all came crashing down when Stu was killed off in the show last year, with Sasha accused of his murder.

The outcome of the emotionally charged trial was revealed last week, with Sasha found not guilty.